Hal, Jacob and Maureen are making me post something to keep my cushy "Contributing Editor" title, so (a) fuck them and (b) let's have a tournament requiring MANY posts!
[RANT ALERT: Skip the next paragraph to get to tournament details, if you so please].
We have voiced our (my) dislike for a cappella groups on this site before, but allow us to explain further. If you go to an Ivy League university, you're more than aware of these mostly talentless schmucks, because you probably have lived with at last one -- I know I did. Each school has like 75 billion of them, and they all have wretchedly unpunny names like "The Penny Loafers" (Penn) or, of course, "The Bear Necessities" (Brown). About once a semester, your friends in a cappella groups force you to see their pathetic little concerts during time that you could spend better by doing, I don't know, anything else. Some bizarre video -- usually made on iMovie by a chimpanzee -- always introduces each troupe. Then comes the opening song, which almost always is by Journey, Bon Jovi or Queen (for lady groups, Sarah McLachlan or Alanis Morisette). The "best" groups have two people that can sing, the other members just go "BUM BUM BUM BUM" in the background. 'Cause, you know, "BUM BUM BUM BUM" is definitely an improvement on an original song's use of instruments. Then they have an after party where they continue to sing, to sing, to sing...
Only mockery in tournament form can properly destroy them. So by this Friday, submit nominations (YouTube videos) to ivygate@gmail.com. We will wade through the submitted videos over the weekend and select (probably) the eight worst, so there will (probably) be one for each school. Then all of next week we will hold head-to-head matches to determine the winner based on your votes. SUBMIT NOMINATIONS NOW YOU LOVELY PEOPLE!
As we've mentioned a couple of times, this past weekend's New Yorker Festival played host to a debate between staff writers Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik, entitled "Resolved: The Ivy League Should Be Abolished." Gladwell, arguing the pro to Gopnik's con, apparently had more input in the naming process.
The two -- Gladwell, the frisky Skeletor, and Gopnik, the gentle francophile -- dedicated an hour or so Saturday evening to this delightful repartee. They neared blows a few times, most notably when Gladwell suggested that the Ivy League wouldn't accept Gopnik for being "short with big ears." Hot-shit Columbia professor/raving British lunatic Simon Schama chaired the debate, however, and a few unhinged slams of his gavel usually kept the debaters at bay.
A brief recap of each participant's main points:
Malcolm Gladwell: The author of Blink and The Tipping Point employed a strategy Gopnik best described as "grabbing numbers out of his ass." Gladwell started by criticizing the criteria Harvard, Yale and Princeton (HYP) -- importantly, he only discussed these three as they are "indicative" of the Ivy League he wants abolished -- use in admissions, focusing particularly on the "personal qualities" category that admissions officers developed in the '20s to keep out an excess of Jews. And, he asked, since the Ivy League "helps define what merit is," are we comfortable with their assumptions, or "are we better if we start over?" He then challenged the notion of the Ivy League as an engine of social mobility by throwing out statistics on HYP that suggest they do relatively little in the way of recruiting lower-class students. In his closing argument, he argued that class mobility in the United States is shamefully rigid these days, and the Ivy League's elitism embolizes how the country is "in the midst of building itself an aristocracy." Thus, the kicker: "We would be a better nation without Harvard, Princeton or Yale." Well, when you put it that way...
Adam Gopnik: Stately, plump svelte Adam Gopnik leapt into the battlefield by noting how European countries do everything better than us except higher education. He then questioned the effectiveness of killing HYP as a panacea for America's woes with this well rehearsed lulu: "Wanting to abolish the Ivy League to solve the problem of American inequality is like wanting to abolish the NBA to solve the problem of American obesity." He repeatedly tried to score New York City approval points by comparing Gladwell's bent on university-destruction to George W. Bush's foreign policy, with HYP being the new "Axis of Evil" and a post-HYP world being, presumably, the academe's Sadr City. He praises Ivy League schools for pooling intellectually curious minds together and noted that Gladwell is "committed to destroying excellence wherever it's concentrated." The Gop also gave props to the excellent tradition of private American research facilities. Basically, the guy said that reforming class-restrictive aspects of the Ivy League is a better plan than doing away with it altogether.
At the end of the debate, Schama took a break from shouting inaudible British babble and held a quick audience poll to determine the winner. Gopnik won, according to Schama's rough hand count. It looked pretty even to me; then again, I was sitting in an upper right balcony corner after showing up 15 minutes late, like any responsible "reporter."
BUT NOW THE FUN PART! IvyGate was granted an exclusive post-game interview with Gladwell and Gopnik in the venue's green room, the transcript of which comes after the jump. Read up -- there's a good chance we came to fisticuffs!
In an effort to conclude this somewhat aborted series from the spring, we present you with some of Penn's most delicious heart cloggers. Here they are, according to Vince Levy, Penn '09 and former DP/34th Street scribe. The final four installments of the series will come at some point. Have a sandwich you just love that hasn't been covered? Email us.
Philadelphia is the only city in the world more commonly associated with a sandwich than anything else (suck it Constitution Center, I'm going to Pat's). Legend holds that when Ben Franklin, but a lad, arrived in Philadelphia with just his kite and a few pennies, the first thing he bought was a loaf of bread -- or so I recall from the 18 pages I completed of my freshman Reading Project. After that, he probably got right down to sandwich time. At Penn, we still do.
Did you guys know that Dartmouth has lots of frats, and that these frats like to be really fratty? OK, to a certain extent this is global knowledge, but we've allowed Dartmouth's Ben O'Donnell to describe for us the touchstone of their fratty rep: the Big Green's version of pong. Try it out this weekend. Learn from our friends in the woods.
See if you can spot the SAT analogy: CEOs: Golf. Robots: Chess. Egyptians: Egyptian Ratscrew. And Dartmouth students? Pong.
Pong. It is not "beer pong" (as if there were any other kind!) It is a game, sure, and a drinking game, more specifically. But it is so much more. It is a skill set, a spectator sport, a study break, a snack, a kingmaker, a heartbreaker, a bonding activity, an intensity reliever, an intensity furnace, a pick-up line, a date, as much obsession as fun, bet-you-can't-play-just-one experience.
To your typical non-Dartmouth Hard Lemonade/Smirnoff Ice aficionado, however, pong can seem counterintuitive, unsanitary and egregiously alcoholic. It forces the consumption of Keystone Light, which tastes like a higher-quality malted beverage distilled in the bowels of a homeless person. But to understand pong is to understand us, so here it is: The Sparknotes version of our most unofficial collegiate pastime.
IvyGate's only been around for a year, but smartass student comedy groups have populated the Ivy League since shortly before the Oliver Cromwell era. We assume YouTuber HarvardHooligan to be in one of these, like Lampoon or something, but we (er, I) are too lazy to actually research this. Whatever he is, he's produced a surprisingly well edited video, considering the two-day turnaround, in response to Interim Dean David Pilbeam's memo killing school-sponsored alcohol parties. Enjoy/feel indifferent:
Fair enough. Still kind of want this kid to get expelled. Wait, are the Hooligans like a group? Meh.
And that editor is me. To the relief of most of you, I'm stepping down from my short-lived stint as an IvyGate 2.0 editor next week after accepting a new bloggy job that, you know, pays an income. I will maintain a loosely defined contributing editor's role, meaning I won't do shit but reserve the right to troll the tipbox for hilarious Spectator articles to make fun of every so often. Hal and Jacob will fill you in on however they plan to fill this tragic, heartbreaking loss, once they've stopped sobbing.
On another note, I'll be embarking on my first and presumably last IvyGate road trip this weekend to cover the "Kill the Ivy League" thing at the New Yorker Festival. So if you're going to either that or the Sasha Frere-Jones-hosted, Diplo-laced dance party this weekend, come and say hi! I have red hair, but no touchy.
See Philadelphia media? If we all team up, we can sometimes make Penn speak -- that is, beyond the inane drivel that Dementor-ish University spokeswoman Lori Doyle shits out every few days.
Philadelphia magazine's online Daily Examiner picked up where we left off re: new Wharton Dean Thomas S. Robertson's academic and domestic partnership with Scott Ward (left), ex-Wharton prof and disgrace to humanity. The two were teaching at Harvard when they bought the home in 1977, according to Philly Mag. And according to Jerry Bessette, who broke the Ward-doing-boys news to Robertson last fall, Robertson responded, "This scares the hell out of me." He also called Bessette about a month ago, shortly after starting the new post at Wharton, and asked "Do you think there's going to be any fallout [from my friendship with Ward]?"
In other words, the response "Dean Thomas" -- not to be confused with the token black kid in Harry Potter -- sent Philadelphia today has probably been sitting in his e-mail's Drafts folder for some time. The letter and some other pressing super-important issues after the jump.
Penn students and some others remember with equal parts horror and glee the case of kiddie-canoodler Scott Ward, a Wharton marketing professor until last August. That was when security officials at Washington's Dulles Airport found videos of him doing little boys on his laptop. Shortly thereafter, school investigators found 80 images in his Wharton office of him doing more little boys. A year later and he's already been sentenced 15 years in Virginia and may see a second trial in Pennsylvania.
Wharton probably hopes that the new Dean, Thomas S. Robertson, can wipe the slate clean. Still, what sort of b-school worth its salt keeps a professor with a record of sexual misconduct on staff?? I mean, Ward had co-published a study called "Adolescent Attitudes Toward Television Advertising" and co-edited a book called Commercial Television and European Children: An International Research (1986)! Obvi his main goal was to fuck millions of kids.
Who would dare co-publish or co-edit such academic smut with Ward? That's almost as bad as, like, owning a house on Cape Cod with a convicted pederast for 25 years.
Oh hey, look, one guy did all of these things: Thomas S. Robertson, the new Wharton Dean.
After the jump: a special happy friendship revealed.
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In an effort to conclude this somewhat aborted 
Brown: 
Did you guys know that Dartmouth has lots of frats, and that these frats like to be really fratty? OK, to a certain extent this is global knowledge, but we've allowed Dartmouth's Ben O'Donnell to describe for us the touchstone of their fratty rep: the Big Green's version of pong. Try it out this weekend. Learn from our friends in the woods.
And that editor is me. To the relief of most of you, I'm stepping down from my short-lived stint as an IvyGate 2.0 editor next week after accepting a 
See Philadelphia media? If we all team up, we can sometimes make Penn speak -- that is, beyond the inane drivel that Dementor-ish University spokeswoman Lori Doyle shits out every few days.
Penn students and some others remember with equal parts horror and glee the case of kiddie-canoodler 
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